MSNBC host Greta Van Susteren allowed Vice President Mike Pence to push the Trump administration’s budget proposals, including plans for new infrastructure spending, as he hypocritically condemned the Obama-era stimulus package for not including enough infrastructure money. In reality, Pence was one of the Republican congressional leaders who helped stymie new spending in the 2009 stimulus bill, which he continues to publicly condemn despite having secretly used funds provided by the bill to prop up Indiana’s economy during his tenure as governor.

In a March 1 interview with the vice president, Van Susteren asked Pence why Republicans are supporting Trump’s expensive infrastructure program when they opposed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), commonly referred to as “the stimulus,” during the Obama administration. Pence claimed that more Republicans would have voted for the stimulus bill in 2009, had the bill been “mostly infrastructure.” From MSNBC’s For the Record:

Pence and most of his GOP cohort resisted the Obama-era stimulus package, including its infrastructure provisions, which they worked to reduce. In a February 24, 2009, speech from the floor of the House of Representatives, Pence not only opposed the recently-signed stimulus bill, which he voted against, he called on Congress to “freeze federal spending” entirely. After the ARRA passed the House and Senate despite near-unanimous Republican opposition, Pence praised the GOP’s obstruction, declaring that “Republicans will be faithful and loyal in our opposition to the liberal Democrats' agenda.” More than a year after the stimulus had passed and the economy was showing signs of a stimulus-driven recovery, Pence still claimed publicly that the bill was a “failure.”

The Huffington Post reported in August 2016 that six months after the passage of the stimulus bill, then-Rep. Pence “privately wrote the administration and requested more than $6 million in stimulus funds for his district” in the form of transportation infrastructure grants. As governor of Indiana, Pence praised infrastructure improvements to the state’s rail system paid for by the stimulus bill he claimed didn’t focus enough on infrastructure. Pence explained away his hypocrisy by arguing the last governor did the same thing. From Right Wing Watch:

“I do support the state of Indiana’s efforts, over the last administration and this administration, to marshal those dollars and put them to work in ways that I think are going to help Northwest Indiana’s economy grow and really maintain our posture as the Crossroads of America,” Pence said.

Pence also noted he is not the first Hoosier governor to blast stimulus spending on one hand, and grab for stimulus cash with the other.

Former Gov. Mitch Daniels also condemned the stimulus. But the Republican had no qualms about taking some $1 billion in stimulus money that was intended to provide “extra” funds for Indiana schools, and instead using it to replace a regular state payment to school corporations.

Van Susteren failed to challenge Pence on his hypocrisy, never mentioned that he voted against the stimulus, and didn’t even gain greater clarification on how the Trump administration’s supposed infrastructure agenda is a substantive improvement on President Obama’s.